scams posts

10 Ways to Spot an E-Mail Scam

by Chris Morris (RSS feed) — Oct 26th 2009 at 12:24PM

The increasing flood of e-mail hitting your inbox can lower the guard of even the most cautious person. In the rush to keep up with important notes, it's easier than ever to fall prey to the scam artists and identity thieves who lurk online.

E-mail scams and phishing attempts evolve constantly, hoping to take advantage of the latest trends and current events. Although the e-mails change, the people behind them inadvertently send up the same warning signs again and again. We dug through mountains of spam to find the most prevailing trends. We've collected some actual scam e-mails and highlighted the warning signs to help you spot a hustle the next time one lands in your inbox.

Tags: e-mail, e-mailscams, features, phishing, scams, security, top, web

Web, Social Networking

Facebook Hit by Fake Profile Scam

by Terrence O'Brien (RSS feed) — Oct 2nd 2009 at 4:10PM

Facebook has been beset by its share of scams, hacks, and attacks. The latest breach of security though is particularly worrisome, with fake profiles containing a link to a supposed home video flooding the site. If you click through, you'll be greeted with a piece of malware posing as an anti-virus program that tries to trick you into handing over credit card information to buy fake security software.

What makes this scam unique is that rather than using hijacked accounts, the malware is spreading through software-generated profiles. The existence of these fake accounts, completely identical outside of the name, indicates that hackers have figured out a way to defeat the Captcha system that is meant to keep bots out.

Tags: facebook, malware, scam, Scams, security, top

Web, Social Networking

Colon Cleansing Spam Running Through Facebook

by Warren Riddle (RSS feed) — Oct 2nd 2009 at 6:38AM

Grifters love Facebook, and there seems to be no limit to the ingenuity and creativity of the shadowy con-artists. According to the Counter Measures blog, a new scam has emerged, which may be connected to previous schemes, incorporating hacked accounts, new phishing techniques, and status updates that falsely appear to be posted via SMS.

The scam began with phony spam status updates, actually posted through the Facebook mobile portal (m.facebook.com), that touted the colon cleansing benefits of ColonRevi.com (which has been disabled). The link actually redirects people to another supplement-shilling site where the new phishing lure would appear. Leaving the page causes what appears to be a real-time support chat window to launch, offering discounts for the products. Instead, the chat window was actually a scripted part of the scam intended to snare more victims.

Tags: facebook, facebook phishing, FacebookPhishing, phishing, scams, top

Web

'Twittersblogs' the Latest Phishing Scam to Hit Twitter

by Warren Riddle (RSS feed) — Jun 30th 2009 at 7:15AM

Social networking sites Twitter and Facebook have become popular hunting grounds for scammers, as updates and instant messages provide easy methods of attracting prey. A new phishing scheme has emerged this week, similar to previous Twitter and Facebook phishing scams, that incorporates direct messages with phony links.

According to Mashable.com, on Monday morning, hundreds of tweets (reading "omg!! is it true what they wrote about you in their tweet blog?") began to spread through Twitter with a link to twittersblogs.com. The site looks exactly like the Twitter login page, and the messages are intended to attract people into entering their login information. This enables the scammers to hijack the victim's account in order to continue disseminating the fake message to the compromised twitterer's followers.

Tags: facebook, phishing, scams, top, twitter

Web, Social Networking

Scammers Inserting Malicious Links in Popular Twitter Topics

by Caleb Johnson (RSS feed) — Jun 22nd 2009 at 2:25PM

What do Wimbledon, Iran, and Perez Hilton have in common? Not a whole lot other than the fact that all three are popular topics on Twitter right now. Mashable reports that Panda Security, an antivirus company, has found that scammers are posting fake tweets that include these popular topics and a link to a malware site.

Sean-Paul Correll, a researcher at Panda Labs, described the scam in a blog post, "Cyber criminals have been targeting Twitter users by creating thousands of messages (tweets) embedded with words involving trending topics and malicious URLs."

After clicking one of these links, you're taken to a page that tells you to upgrade your Flash player, or a similar application. If you download the 'player,' malware will be installed on your computer. Next, you receive a message that says your computer has a virus and tells you to download a fraudulent program called 'Fast Anti-Virus 2009,' which, of course, costs $89.

Tags: iran, malware, perez hilton, PerezHilton, scams, security, social networking, SocialNetworking, top, twitter, wimbledon

Social Networking

New '151' Phishing Scam Emerges on Facebook

by Warren Riddle (RSS feed) — May 15th 2009 at 12:57PM

As Facebook continues its incredible growth, the target on its back for hackers and computer criminals keeps getting bigger and bigger. The social networking site -- which now boasts more than 200 million members -- has recently been the subject of a number of attacks, with the latest coming this week in the form of a new phishing scam.

Tags: 151scam, Facebook, phishing, scams, top

Social Networking

Spammers' New Favorite Tool? Twitter Search (for E-Mails)

by Warren Riddle (RSS feed) — May 15th 2009 at 7:11AM

As Twitter's renown continues to globally expand, the micro-blogging site has provided endless discussion fodder for media talking heads. Most of the commentary has revolved around celebrities' high-profile tweeting, and whether or not the site is the ultimate platform for the narcissist in all of us. One aspect of the site that is beyond debate, however, is its appeal to spammers.

According to Dancho Danchev of ZDNet, Twitter offers spammers a multitude of methods for disseminating their junk, all the while collecting e-mail addresses of unsuspecting twitterers.

Tags: e-mail, microblogging, scams, spam, top, twitter

Social Networking

Millionaire DuPont Heir Is Gold-Dug By Web Girls

by Chad Mumm (RSS feed) — May 12th 2009 at 1:46PM

Let's pretend for a second that you are a millionaire heir to a famous fortune. You've got tons of cash to blow, so why not spend it on a hot, young (and ambitious) sugar baby? The mistress angle is so played out, but thanks to new technology, you won't even have to proposition that aspiring actress bringing you your Pellegrino at Cipriani. SeekingArrangement.com will set you up with an attractive youngster for you to pamper, but beware -- people from the Interwebs aren't like the people you meet in real life. Not only will they accept your sugar lovin', but they'll extort the living daylights out of you in the process.

This is exactly what happened to Stephen Dent, heir to the DuPont fortune. According to the New York Post, Dent willingly spent more than $200,000 on women he met on SeekingArrangement.com, but that didn't stop 22-year-old Queens, NY resient Roy Sipel from extorting an additional $40,000 from Dent back in March 2008, after finding out that the millionaire had sex with his girlfriend. Sipel was busted on larceny charges and is spending 16 months in jail. This apparently wasn't enough to scare Dent, who lives in Greenwich, CT, away from the site, because he went back and ended up getting extorted again, this time by an Ohio couple for $100,000, who were busted this March.

Although this all played out thanks to a social-networking site, the classic gold-digger extortion play is the oldest trick in the book. Next time, maybe Dent will hit Craigslist for his trysts -- we've heard that people are much more responsible on that site. [From: New York Post , via Gawker]

Tags: crime, extortion, onlinedating, scam, scams, seekingarrangement.com, top

Cell Phones

Text-Message Spam Continues to Grow Around the World

by Terrence O'Brien (RSS feed) — May 4th 2009 at 4:39PM

According to the Observer, mobile phone owners in the U.K. are battling the latest spam scourge to sweep across the globe: SMS spam. Though not as pervasive as the e-mail variety, spam text messages usually attempt to lure people into signing up for expensive services that offer adult materials or promise cash settlements from accidents. The problem has been pervasive for over a year in places like China, and it's recently become a big enough problem in the States that the U.S. Senate last month proposed legislation to ban text-message spam.

Unfortunately, text-message spam doesn't stop unless the recipient actively opts out of future correspondence, which means replying to the original spam text (something that can cost around $0.15 per message if you don't have a texting plan). For those receiving the messages, however, there are avenues of recourse. The New York Times recently explained how to block such texts through your mobile carrier (usually something as simple as checking a few boxes online). If you're one of our British readers, you can file a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which regulates electronic data privacy. The U.K.'s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) will meanwhile handle complaints of misleading or false advertising.

Other than filing complaints with the proper authorities, the best course of action is to ignore the spam texts. After all, there is no guarantee that requesting your removal from a text-messaging list will work. In fact, the misleading nature of the texts may lead you to believe you're opting out when you're actually signing up for unwanted, expensive services. [From: Observer, via Textually.org]

Tags: scams, security, spam, text-message spam, Text-messageSpam, texting, textmessagespam, top, uk

Web, Social Networking

New Facebook Phishing Scam Will Hijack Your Account

by Terrence O'Brien (RSS feed) — Apr 30th 2009 at 2:02PM

Facebook Phishing Scam Spams Your Friends

If you recently got a message in your Facebook inbox with links to FBAction.net, we hope you didn't follow them. If you did, we hope you at least didn't fall for the fake log-in screen that was waiting for you at the URL...

This recent phishing attack has made its way across Facebook by leading users to a convincing looking -- but fake -- Facebook log-in screen. If you enter your information, the scam site then locks you out of your account and sends the original message out to all your friends. Fortunately, at present time, it doesn't look like there is any additional malicious payload, which means no virus or no spyware. It's just account hijacking for the sake of it.

Facebook has already blocked the address, which should put an end to the annoyance, but some users are still locked out of their accounts until Facebook finishes cleaning up the mess.

The best way to avoid such attacks, as we always say, is using common sense. Don't follow links or open files from people and addresses you don't trust, and never enter passwords or other sensitive information in a page unless you're sure the site is secure. And always check the URL to make sure you're on the site you think you are. [From: Mashable]

Tags: facebook, phishing, scam, scams, security, top

Nigerian Scammers Now Working Craigslist?

by Tim Stevens (RSS feed) — Apr 21st 2009 at 10:54AM

Enterprising Nigerian Scammers Work Through American Woman

Of all the scams out there on the Internets, the Nigerian (or 419) scam is far and away the most well-known. Individuals have fallen for it and lost their entire savings, banks have fallen for it and lost millions, and even a British politician was sucked in. We're happy to help inform people about this scam so that they can avoid it, but it seems some Americans are paying attention for the wrong reason: using the scam themselves to rip off others.

Olga Domingo is a 32-year-old Californian who, according to police, may have scammed $79,000 out of 60 people using the same old trick that's become synonymous with Nigeria, by sending fake checks to people for a given amount and then tricking them into returning a real check (or wire transfer) for a smaller amount. In this case, Domingo is suspected to have gone through Craigslist listings, offered to purchase items from sellers, sent them checks for too much money and gotten refunds back. Of course, the checks she allegedly sent out were bogus, the ones she allegedly received all too real.

Tags: 419, 419 scam, 419Scam, classifieds, craigslist, crime, heists, nigerian scam, NigerianScam, scam, scams, security, top

Video Games

'New Games' at GameStop Not Necessarily New

by Warren Riddle (RSS feed) — Apr 13th 2009 at 2:17PM

Video game outlet GameStop allows consumers to buy and sell used games, and, until recently, has been the only major retailer to provide such a service. According to reports this month from video game blog Kotaku, the franchise has been taking advantage of its market domination by selling used games as new ones.

GameStop permits its employees to "check-out" games by playing them for up to four days, but has allegedly been selling these previously played games as new. To explain the opened packaging, some employees have allegedly been telling customers that such games are display models (which are removed from their packaging as a shoplifting deterrent). Mark Methanitis, an attorney for The Vernon Group, told Kotaku that the practice may violate state deceptive trade practices if GameStop is "representing that goods are original or new [when] they are deteriorated, reconditioned, reclaimed, used, or secondhand."

This isn't the first time GameStop has been embroiled in an uproar over its used game policy. The company doled out $375,000 to settle a 2003 class action suit that claimed the retailer was selling used games as new from 1998 to 2003. This current situation couldn't come at a worse time for the company, as Amazon and Toys 'R' Us both recently announced their entry into the used game and trade-in market. Rumor has it that Best Buy will soon join the market, as well. GameStop's used game business has been extremely successful, bringing in billions of dollars a year. But, with consumers becoming increasingly picky with their money and with competition for business getting more heated, now is not the time for a retailer to fall into a controversy over ethical business practices. [From: Kotaku Via: Daily Tech]

Related Links:

Tags: deception, ethics, gamestop, retail, scams, shopping, trade-in, used, used games, UsedGames

Cell Phones, Computers, Advice, Editor's Picks, Windows Software, Webware, Mobile Software, Mac Software

15 Phishing Scams to Watch Out For

by Warren Riddle (RSS feed) — Mar 5th 2009 at 2:10PM

Perhaps the most pervasive and discussed Internet graft, phishing garners daily mention from media outlets for its high-profile victims, such as PayPal, and its incredibly diverse methods. Traditionally known as an e-mail scam, the hustle has grown to incorporate seemingly infinite forms of attack, which can make it seem intimidating and confusing.

In theory, though, the con is pretty simple. Scammers bait unsuspecting targets with seemingly legitimate requests from what appear to be reliable sources (banks, news outlets, stores) in efforts to obtain personal information. The perps specifically target data, such as social security numbers, passwords and bank pins, that can be used to access bank and credit card accounts, resulting in stolen funds and identity theft.

Casual surfers of the Web can take precautions to ensure they don't fall for any bait. Be incredibly wary of whom you give personal information, and always keep your anti-virus software up-to-date. To help you stay informed about the latest phishing incarnations, here are some of the most prevalent and convincing scams making the rounds

Next >>

Tags: features, phishing, safety, scam, scams, security

Computers, MySpace

Scammers Stealing Online Facebook Profiles for Evil Deeds?

by Tim Stevens (RSS feed) — Feb 4th 2009 at 1:28PM

Scammers and Malicious Surfers Stealing Social Network Profiles

These days, more and more people are willing to throw up all the sordid details of their lives online, which makes us doubt if privacy even exists anymore. That said, most folks share their details with good intentions; reconnecting with lost friends or telling people what they're up to in the hopes that someone else will join in. Sadly, some scammers are taking advantage of all this candor by stealing details of our online personas to create their own fake identities, infiltrating your social networks.

To test how easy this is to do, Ian Armit, a director at Aladdin's Attack Intelligence Research Center, created a number of fake profiles based on composite information gleaned from other online profiles. He was quickly able to make connections on various social networks with real people with real profiles. Once inside those networks, Armit found it was easier to make more friends and gain more virtual influence, even though he was using fake identities.

Why would someone want to do such a thing? There are a number of reasons, like the Koobface virus that spread through Facebook late last year via hijacked and faked profiles. There's also the sad case of Megan Meier, who killed herself after a classmate's mother created a fake MySpace profile pretending to be a potential love interest.

Tags: facebook, online privacy, OnlinePrivacy, privacy, scammer, scams, social networking, social networks, SocialNetworking, SocialNetworks

Computers

Internet Scams Increasing as Economy Stumbles

by Terrence O'Brien (RSS feed) — Feb 2nd 2009 at 6:05AM

We've noted before the economic downturn has been a boon to online scammers. As more tech workers have lost their jobs, the pool of potential cyber criminals has been growing, as has the number of people out there willing to believe the e-mails promising virus protection, get-rich-quick schemes, and funny or pornographic videos circulating on the Web.

By mid September, there were 31,000 malicious programs making the Internet rounds. Trojans, worms, even good 'ol fashioned data mining schemes have really taken off following the collapse of the banking industry and the rest of the economy. The scams are being fed to victims via IM, e-mail, and even social networking services.

Hackers and criminals are becoming more sophisticated as well, hijacking banner ads and complete Web sites, using Flash to install malware, and redirecting users from legitimate pages to infected sites. Monster.com and MyCheckFree.com have both fallen victim recently attacks, and experts only expect the number of scams to increase during 2009.

So keep your guard up when online, and remember as easy as a life of theft may seem, crime -- even cyber crime -- doesn't pay. And now you know... and knowing is half the battle. [From: USA Today]

Related links:

Tags: crime, hacker, hackers, safety, scam, scams, security, virus

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'Black Friday' Deals to Watch For

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Black Friday' Deals to Watch For

Traditionalists might balk, but the holiday shopping season is already underway. Skeptical? Head to your local department store and you'll be inundated by Christmas trees and ornaments. Bargain hunters, though, know that the real deals are more than a month away.

Black Friday, traditionally, is when retailers truly slash prices. Early birds can save hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars off of their holiday bills. Switched.com checked with a few elves, who gave a sneak peek at what you can expect deal-wise this year.

Blu-ray Players and Movies: Blu-ray is shaping up to be the biggest door buster of this year's Black Friday. de Grandpre expects at least one retailer will offer a Blu-ray player for just $49. Look for bargains on Blu-ray films as well, with last year's hit titles (such as "Iron Man") to fall as low as $5.

Laptops: With the proliferation of Netbooks this year, it's never been easier to find affordable portable computing, but Dan de Grandpre, CEO of DealNews.com says it will get even cheaper on Black Friday. Look for well-equipped Netbooks to sell for $199 – and basic 15" laptops to go for as little as $249.

HDTVs (Pretty big): The holidays are typically the best time to buy a new TV – and Black Friday is the time to do it. If you're looking for a normal sized set, you're in luck. Piper Jaffrey analyst Mitch Kaiser says he expects to see 32-inch LCD sets for as low as $299. GottaDeal.com is estimating 37-inch plasma and LCD sets will fall to $399 or less.

HDTVs (Really big): Need something bigger? How about a 46-47 inch LCD set for $599 – a 25 percent savings? Or a 52-inch LCD for $999? Dealnews says you can expect both. Plasma deals will be a little harder to come by, but a 50-inch set should run roughly $899.

HD Camcorders: You've wanted to shoot your child's school play in HD for a while, but haven't been able to spring for the pricey camcorder. This might be the year. Low-end, flash-based 720p models could drop as low as $60 (though you won't be able to zoom with those). Expect a high quality 1080p HD camcorder for $349.

GPS: While navigation systems have dramatically expanded their reach this year – even making it onto the iPhone – there's still a market for car-based systems. Dealnews predicts you'll be able to find a no-name entry-level system for $49, while a Garmin or Tom-Tom brand will be as low as $69.

Digital Picture Frames: Showcasing your digital pictures consistently gets cheaper. This year, skip the 7-inch screens and focus on the 8- or 9-inch ones, which should be available on Black Friday for as little as $30.

Monitors: Computer monitors might not be the sexiest of gifts, but they're usually welcomed with open arms – and they'll be cheap this year. Name brand 22-inch LCD models may go for as low as $99, while 24-inch models will drop below $150.

Memory: Don't know anyone who needs a monitor? External hard drives are always popular, since they're an easy way to back-up data. Dealnews expects a 1TB drive to fall as low as $49 this year. Gottadeal is looking for 8GB flash drives to hit $15.

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